The Ocean has its Silent Caves
by Elivira
Summary: Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and all he wants to do is swim. To let the shift take him, scales and his legs, feathers in his hair, webbing between his fingers, and just let go. To feel the water surround and just sing, safely in the depths. (In which Stiles' mother was a siren and Stiles has always taken after her more than he has his father.) Siren!Stiles, Gen


**Author's Note:** I have a weakness for creature!Stiles, I'll admit it. Even though I like him as a human on the show. Thanks to HunterPeverell over on AO3for betaing! You're so awesome!

* * *

 _The Ocean has its silent caves,_

 _Deep, quiet, and alone;_

 _Though there be fury on the waves,_

 _Beneath them there is none._

 _The awful spirits of the deep_

 _Hold their communion there;_

 _And there are those for whom we weep,_

 _The young, the bright, the fair._

 _Calmly the wearied seamen rest_

 _Beneath their own blue sea._

 _The ocean solitudes are blest,_

 _For there is purity._

 _The earth has guilt, the earth has care,_

 _Unquiet are its graves;_

 _But peaceful sleep is ever there,_

 _Beneath the dark blue waves._

\- The Ocean, Nathaniel Hawthorne

* * *

She'd had feathers in her hair and when she smiled, her teeth were just a little bit too sharp. As a family, they would go on bimonthly trips to the coast. His father would stay back, away from the water (safe) and watch as her legs and arms danced with fine scales, iridescent pastels, blues, greens, and purples in the sunlight. The surf flowed around her feet, her toes curling into the sand. She listened to him talk from too far away, sounds that would be muted for any human's ears, as she watched Stiles splash down the beach, eyes sharp and birdlike.

As a child, Stiles and laughed and played around her feet, tracing the webbing between her toes until she laughed and cuffed him on the head as he darted away to dive into the water, grinning with delight, a song on his lips he knew he couldn't sing.

Stiles doesn't care that he's different, that when he lets the water surround him, he can spend hours without coming up for air, that when he stands in the surf he looks just like his mother.

When he was a child, it didn't matter that he wasn't human, Stiles knew that he was loved, even if the slits of his gill never really disappeared, were still there after they packed up their picnic and all three of them piled into his mother's small red Honda. His father's eyes lingered on the small scar pale lines on either side of their chins, matching in the dim light of the inside of the car.

 _(John doesn't believe in love at first sight, but if he did, it would be the day he meets her._

 _She sitting on the rocky beach, toes just barely touching the salty water. She's beautiful, inhumanly so, his mind supplies, and when she speaks her voice is ethereal._

 _"Hello soldier."_

 _"Hello.")_

It's cruel, Stiles thinks, to take away someone's will. To tell them something and make the want it, to take away all of their freedom until all that is left is a puppet.

His mother had said that it was their terrible burden, and inheritance millennia old. She said that they didn't have to give in to the sins of their ancestors, creatures who lured sailors to the murky depths and feasted on their remains.

She never hides what they are from him. Tells him stories of sisters she left behind and underwater caves no human could ever find. She tells him of the Greeks and their ships as if she was there (and sometimes he thinks she might have been).

 _(He finds her beach because people have been drowning along the quiet stretch of shoreline for decades, too many to be natural. He is still a young deputy, fresh out of the Army, with ethics and morals and a good feeling of right from wrong._

 _"Have you ever seen anything strange here?" He asks her, trying to ignore the way she leans in close, large eyes sharp and bright sea green._

 _"No." She says in her musical voice. "There's nothing strange happening here."_

 _"You're right," he says, "there's nothing strange here," suddenly, unnaturally, sure that it's the truth.)_

Sometimes when he stares in the mirror Stiles sees his mother. Sees sea green eyes, sharp white teeth, and dainty pointed ears, before he catches himself and shakes the shift away.

Sometimes, Stiles finds himself running fingers over the dimpled lines on either side of his neck. Lines that haven't an opened in months. He tells people that he was scratched by a particularly recalcitrant cat when he was young, and for some reason they believe him, no matter how horrible of a lie it really is.

Sometimes his father asks, "have you been swimming lately?" And there's an edge to his voice, a little bit of fear, as if he scared that one day Stiles will drive himself to the beach in his old beat up Jeep and never come back. He knows that Stiles only swims once a year, but he still asks anyway.

Sometimes, Stiles is scared of the same thing, that one day he'll give in to the feeling that pulls him out of Beacon Hills and towards the coast. Pulls him to the salty smell of the rocky Northern California beach, pulls him to whisper and sing to human ears until they have lost themselves to his voice.

 _(Her name is Claudia, except she says it in a way, and with sounds, that make it sound like a different name altogether. Sometimes, when she smiles, her teeth are sharp and shark-like and her lips curl in a way so predatory it send shivers down his spine._

 _He's not stupid; he's read the stories, heard of women with tongues of silver and songs to lure sailors to their deaths. They're myths, he tells himself, but he can see it in her eyes, the way her skin glistens in a way that isn't just sunlight on droplets water and the openings of gills curling around her neck. He has seen her dive into the water from the cliffs that surround her beach, one hundred feet up and one hundred feet down, only to break up through the surface, grinning as she waves at him watching from the shore._

 _She never hides her inhumanity from him, but she never brings it up. And he doesn't ask.)_

Stiles strips off his shirt and throws it up to beach where the tide can't reach it, standing naked on the rocky shore, water splashing him from the crashing waves, and cliffs stretching up tall behind him. He loves this beach, loves it so much it scares him. Standing on the speech makes him want to dive into the ocean and never come up for air. It makes him want to sing. Songs fighting to bubble out of his chest.

Stiles shivers in the cool November breeze and knows it if anyone saw him now, they could never mistake him for the human he pretends to be. He knows his eyes are glowing sea green, and his legs shine in the moonlight, scales appearing in the wake of water droplets as they land on his skin. He doesn't fight the shift.

The tide is rising quickly and the water that had an barely touching his toes is now lapping at his ankles, warm, despite the cool air because, to him, water could never feel anything but the perfect temperature.

His lungs burn, his neck aches, he dives in.

Strong legs and webbed toes, feet elongated in the shift, kick and he's off, water catching on the thin skin between long fingers as he races under the waves.

He only swim here once a year, lets the water wash over him on the anniversary of his mother's death, because she loved it here and in another life, lured men and women alike to the murky depths.

This beach is his mother's legacy, more than he will ever be.

 _("Come with me." John asks her, when his work is calling him back to Beacon Hills and he doesn't have any more excuses to stay. Claudia looks at him with her birdlike eyes and he holds his breath. A feather drifts from her head to the ground._

 _"Yes." She says, voice soft and she looks almost surprised that it's her answer. John is surprised, in a way, that she would leave her beach for him. He would go with her in a second if he could, but he can't, can't even swim with her without forgetting how to breath, how to swim._

 _He can't go with her, but she can go with him._

 _They leave, the drownings stop, and John pretends he doesn't notice, turns a blind eye for the first, but not the last, time in his life.)_

Stiles knows that his father loved his mother, loved her enough to keep her trapped miles from the coast. She let him, because, if sirens could love, she would have loved him.

His mother had once told him that, on land, she felt trapped in her own skin and Stiles had asked her why she stayed.

"Because of your father," she had said, "he loves me." Like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Stiles thinks that his mother felt for his father is a victim what does for their savior; an undying gratitude that she took to her grave. So no, his parents weren't _in love_ but they loved each other as much as they could. There was a gold man band on his father's finger and an empty film container full of sand in the back of his father's closet to prove it.

 _("You were born with two left feet." John used to laugh at Stiles, affection bright in his eyes. Until one day Claudia glared, eyes flashing and teeth too sharp as she snapped._

 _"We are not built for land, John."_

 _His son's childhood is filled with unerring gracelessness, skinned knees, and bruised elbows._

 _"He'll learn." She tells him, smiling an apology for snapping at him. And then to Stiles, "Do you want to go swimming?"_

 _In the water, his son's movements are swift and easy, as he follows in the wake of his mother. On land Stiles is all long limbs and clumsy movements.)_

There is a period of time in his early years of high school, when Stiles hates what he is, wants nothing more than to be human. And then Scott's gets bitten by a werewolf, and Stiles thinks, normal is overrated.

* * *

The first time he makes meets Derek Hale, he can feel it, the predator lurking beneath the surface of the man in front of him. He feels it like an itch under his skin and the sharpening of teeth in his mouth.

He is scared, for a moment, that the creature standing there will look at him, and see, not a human boy, but sea green eyes, pointed ears, and sharp, sharp teeth.

* * *

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and all he wants to do is swim. To let the shift take him, scales on his arms and legs, feathers in his hair, webbing between his fingers, and just let go. To feel the water surround him and just sing, safely in the depths. It used to scare him, make him subdued and sullen for the rest of the day, unable to meet his father's eyes when he left for school, his skin feeling too tight and too loose at the same time. Now though, it fills him with a sense of otherness, as if Scott isn't the only one who can protect himself. Because now, Stiles is not alone, not the only one who fights the call of something immovable. For the first time in his life, Stiles feels right in his own skin and ignores the call the sea, not out of fear, but of loyalty, because of Scott can do it Stiles damn well can.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I have plans for a continuation, but I'm pretty busy with a bunch of other in-progress fics, so it won't be for awhile. Sorry :)


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